Tags: Divinity: Original Sin

Using thumbsticks and selection wheels to combine crafting ingredients, resolve dialogue puzzles, and conduct pixel-accurate tactical battles? There’s an audience for that. The mostly excellent Divinity: Original Sin 2 from Larian Studios is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in August.

The original Divinity: Original Sin was upgraded to an “enhanced edition” for its console release in 2015, adding full voicework for all characters, controller support, and a host of tweaks. The current sequel on PC already has fully voiced characters, controller support, and a few patches worth of enhancements. It remains to be seen what Larian can add to the game.

Larian Studios has unveiled Game Master Mode in Divinity: Original Sin 2. The feature, originally a $2 million Kickstarter stretch goal, adds a suite of tools to the upcoming video game that allows an asymmetrical multiplayer session in which one player guides the others through an adventure like a traditional tabletop roleplaying game. It’s a proposal that games like BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights and n-Space’s Sword Coast Legends have delivered with varying degrees of success over the years. Larian’s take on the design blends their proprietary setting and rules with easily configured custom modules that allow players to create their own scenarios, and even handle unexpected situations with on-the-fly tools. There’s even a generic dice roller!

As with previous efforts to create a video game version of sitting around a table eating pizza and Cheetos while arguing over dice rolls, the tools’ flexibility and ease of use will be a big factor in how widely the community adopts it. How does Game Master Mode in Divinity: Original Sin 2 measure up? Keeping in mind that it’s still a work in progress for an early access game, this video shows Larian’s Swen Vinke putting the mode through it’s paces at Wizards of the Coast’s headquarters – the home of Dungeons & Dragons.

Larian Studios made good on their promise to release an Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin on Tuesday. People that already owned the original Original Sin got the newer version added to their Steam libraries for free. What was a great RPG romp last year is now a terrifically polished experience. Besides full controller support, the enhanced edition adds voice work for all the dialogue in the game, revamped combat encounters, more cinematics, split-screen co-op, and a bevy of fixes. (Check the changes here.) Matching the humor in the game, the developers pulled a fast one in the EULA – that thing you mindlessly agreed to so you could start the game. Buried in it was this gem:

16. Special Consideration. A special consideration in material or immaterial form may be awarded to the first 100 authorized licensees to actually read this section of the EULA and contact LARIAN STUDIOS at [email protected] This offer can be withdrawn by LARIAN STUDIOS at any time.

Larian says their lawyers feel good that they got the requested 100 responses. Kudos to the sharp-eyed legal eagles that actually scrolled through the wall of text! There’s no word yet on what form the “special consideration” will take.

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is available on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Larian has announced Divinity: Original Sin 2. The Belgian developers are going back to Kickstarter to fund its development. Larian founder Swen Vincke explained that they are crowd-funding the game because they felt that the funding and feedback they received from pledgers was crucial to the development of the first game.

“When we made D: OS, we did a lot of experimentation with systems, constantly improving them and offering them to our players for feedback. I believe it was a shining example of the power of early access, which both provides a developer with feedback as well as the funding to integrate that feedback. It was also the best development process I’d ever seen.”

Larian also noted that because most of the tech development was done during the making of the first game, they believe the majority of work on the sequel will be a smoother process. Vincke stated that the studio will be able to use the improvements of the Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin in Divinity: Original Sin 2. The Enhanced Edition will be a free upgrade for owners of Divinity: Original Sin on PC later this year. The Kickstarter for Divinity: Original Sin 2 will begin on August 26th.

Enhanced editions are in. InXile Entertainment is doing it for Wasteland 2 and now Larian is giving Divinity: Original Sin a do-over as well. Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is coming to consoles and PCs. This improved version of the fantasy RPG adds full voice performances for all characters, controller support, couch co-op, new quests and NPCs, and the obligatory revamped visuals. Rather than just being a set of enhancements to bring the game to consoles, the developers are also “heavily” rewriting the story to include a new ending. In fact, it’s so different that when the enhanced edition is released for free (yes, free) to current owners, it will be a separate game. According to Larian’s Swen Vincke, they were just going to patch the PC version of Original Sin, then translate that work to the consoles, but the project grew into something larger.

And so we started, first with small things intended to be included in the N-th patch, but soon with more drastic things that couldn’t be included that easily. Then, even more drastic things made it to our tasklist that conflicted with the “patch protocol”, a series of rules that ensure story changes don’t break savegame compatibility and would therefore only be present in new games.

When the UI, controller and split-screen experiments looked like they were going to be successful, it almost became a no-brainer that we’d apply our re-engineering skills to the entire game. And so we did.

You can watch a video about Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition here.

The bear! The bear! The bear and the burglar so fair! Nope. That’s not how it goes. The Bear and the Burglar is the new free add-on for Divinity: Original Sin. The DLC adds two companions to the game to round out players’ four-person adventuring party. Bairdotr is a powerful ranger, and Wolgraff is the silent but deadly rogue. Rock, paper, scissors will be truly exciting now!

The Bear and the Burglar DLC is part of patch 1.0.169 that the developers claim adds a “big layer of polish” to various spell and environmental effects. With all the swoosh-boom that the game already had, the new effects must turn it into a Michael Bay movie.

I was just looking for a spell scroll, perhaps something that would shoot a fireball or drop a boulder from the sky, when I accidentally click and dragged a barrel of oil that I had in my character’s inventory. (Why was my fighter dragging a barrel of combustible liquid around? Oh, that’s right. I had accidentally put it into his pockets during a routine loot grab and hadn’t bothered to get rid of it.) Plop! My fighter tossed the barrel out into the middle of the undead pack that was trying to eat my party’s brains. Wait a minute! This could work. My fighter bashed the barrel open with a mighty swing of his axe, spilling oil on the ground. My ranger used a scroll of fire immunity on the fighter, then my wizard tossed a flaming bolt at the puddle. Whoosh! The undead went up in a satisfying blaze while my protected warrior laughed.

After the jump, what can you say about a game that’s like one big Easter egg for role-playing game fans?Continue reading →